The Fruitless Divide

Walk into any car dealership and you’ll see it: rows of gleaming, airtight, sanctuaries from the noisy, uncontrollable chaos of the world, its people, and its elements. Each vehicle, with its climate controlled, surround sound equipped cockpit, is a refuge of control in an insecure world. So are houses, and so are answering machines, where we screen out the riff-raff solicitors and other individuals we would rather avoid. Today’s America is composed of a series of walls, barricades, and borders, each designed to afford some greater level of protection from outsiders—that great, generic expanse of undesirables whom we’d just as soon not have to reckon with. And yet, somehow, given enough impetus, that telemarketer selling a special deal on home delivery of the local tribune always seems to get you live, caught off guard. The 2,000-mile southern divide that separates the United States from Mexico is no exception. In The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle, Angelinos Kyra and Del...